What are my first steps as a trustee? | Trust 101 Series | Lawvex скачать в хорошем качестве

What are my first steps as a trustee? | Trust 101 Series | Lawvex

In this video we're focusing on now that I've been installed as a trustee and I've notified everybody what I do next? What's the next step? What are my first steps as a trustee? So the answer to that depends a little bit on whether my beneficiary is incapacitated, if I'm taking care of an aging parent and just paying bills for them, managing the assets for their benefit, or they've passed away. If they’ve passed away, then I'm going to do full trust administration, collect assets, pay off debts, and then distribute the trust assets to the beneficiaries of the trust. Review the Will and Trust Yes, you can read it, and it's important that you do. You'd be shocked at how many people are trustees, and they haven't looked at the terms of the trust themselves. It's critical to do that because we need to know a few things. The first thing is who is involved, who are the beneficiaries? Who are the heirs? We need that in order to provide the notice that we talked about in the previous video. We also need to know who is going to be involved in the distribution plan. Who gets assets? Do they get a specific gift of an asset, or do they participate in a percentage of the whole - what we call the residue or a residuary gift? If those people are receiving assets, we want to know who they are, and we want to know how to contact them. We're going to need addresses. We're going to need phone numbers. We're going to need email addresses, all of those things. Specific gifts are important in trust administration because, generally speaking, the person who receives that specific gift is actually entitled to any income from it after the date of death. So trustees sometimes make the mistake of including rent or proceeds of income from assets that are to be specifically gifted into the general trust pot. When, the rents really belong to the person that gets the specific gift unless there's some other agreement. I really want to know who my specific gift beneficiaries are early and identify them and get in contact with them quickly and determine if there's any reason why they can't receive it or why I can’t give them that gift quickly. Preserve and Protect Trust Assets The next thing in trust administration is figuring out what I need to do to comply with my duty to protect, preserve and maintain trust property. As a trustee, I have to do those things. One of the best ways to protect and preserve trust property is to make sure that insurance policies are in place for vehicles, houses, and things like that. So you need to figure out who the insurance agent is or where the policies are located. Have the premiums been paid in full? Are we current with premium payments? This is critical because if you become a trustee of a trust and suddenly, there's a fire at an income property and the house burns down, and the previous trustee or even the grantor maybe let the insurance policy lapse, then we're in a lot of trouble because now we have an asset that we didn't preserve and protect and maintain. So think early about insurance and whether or not we have those policies in place. Appraisal also helps the beneficiaries because under current tax law it gives them a tax basis step-up as of the date of death for the assets they get reappraised at that number. It helps them when they receive those assets at a higher tax basis. But we can't do the appraisal unless we know what assets are out there. So we want to start making a list of those trust assets and figure out which ones are in the trust and which ones aren't. In a future video, we'll talk about what to do when assets are not in the trust and get into that in a lot more detail, but it’s really important to understand for an asset to be in the trust, it means that it's titled in the name of the trustee of the trust, and it could be the prior trustee of the trust. But if it says the grantor of the trust individually, if it's just in their name, then it's not in the trust. If it says “Joe Smith, Trustee of the Joe Smith Trust”, then the asset is titled in the name of the trust. If it just says “Joe Smith” then the asset is not in the trust. Personal Property Memorandums If you're not familiar with a Personal Property Memorandum, I encourage you to go to our website, www.lawvex.com/ppm, for Personal Property Memorandum. I've got a video there that explains it, and we even have a self-help tool where you can make your own Personal Property Memorandum on our website. Absolutely no cost using software that we developed. So those are some good strategies and tips for trustees that are just starting out. Make sure you've got insurance. Make sure that you take custody of personal property, and figure out what the trust says about specific gifts if there are any specific gifts that need to be dealt with quickly, doing those things will get you a good start in your plan as a trustee and how you will handle trust administration going forward.